Meet Mark

Let me introduce myself. My name is Mark Sisson. I’m 63 years young. I live and work in Malibu, California. In a past life I was a professional marathoner and triathlete. Now my life goal is to help 100 million people get healthy. I started this blog in 2006 to empower people to take full responsibility for their own health and enjoyment of life by investigating, discussing, and critically rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true about health and wellness...

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The Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge

Everyone wants to eat good food, be active, and enjoy all that life offers. Everyone wants to be healthier, fitter, happier, and more productive. But no one wants to endure a lifetime of misery and hard work just to get there. Luckily, hundreds of thousands of people have already discovered that it’s actually really simple, that it doesn’t require suffering and sacrifice, and that just a few foundational changes to the way we approach food, exercise, and life can transform our health and wellness for the rest of our lives.

How do you do it, you ask? By aligning your behaviors with what your genes expect from you as detailed in The Primal Blueprint.

You’ve seen the success stories. You’ve heard about it from friends and family members. You’ve thought about it a half dozen times and never quite pulled the trigger. Well, all that dithering ends today. Take the challenge. Change your body. Transform your health. Improve your life – for good.

What Is the Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge?

Most of all, the Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge will show you that you alone have the power to control your health, determine your body composition, and direct gene expression toward fat-burning, muscle-building, energy-producing, and life-extending pathways.

The 21-Day Challenge In 30 Seconds

This is the Challenge. Do it for just 21 days and the results will speak for themselves.

Eat real food.

Avoid sugar, grains, unhealthy fats, beans/legumes.

Align your carb intake with your weight goals and activity levels.

Move frequently at a slow pace: Get between 2-5 hours per week of moderate aerobic exercise.

Grains, sugars, sweetened beverages: Processed carbohydrates drive excess insulin production, which can lead to lifelong insidious weight gain. Even if you don’t have excess body fat concerns, a high insulin-producing diet promotes systemic inflammation, fatigue, and burnout. Grains might be the most offensive foods in your diet because they also contain “antinutrients” that may cause health problems beyond just gaining weight.

Beans and other legumes:Beans, lentils, peanuts, peas, and soy products contain antinutrients that compromise digestion, immune function, and general health. The highly-touted fiber in beans is problematic, and the carbohydrate content in all legumes is high enough to warrant cutting or eliminating them in the interest of moderating insulin production.

Dairy: Most commercial dairy products are unhealthy for everyone – laden with hormones and other impurities. Organic butter and heavy cream are the preferred forms of dairy, if you are lactose tolerant.

Carbohydrate intake is often the decisive factor in weight loss success and prevention of widespread health problems like Metabolic Syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. These average daily intake levels assume that you are also getting sufficient protein and healthy fats, and are doing some amount of Primal exercise. The ranges in each zone account for individual metabolic differences.

100-150 grams per day: Primal Maintenance zone. Once you’ve arrived at your goal or ideal body composition, you can maintain it quite easily here while enjoying abundant vegetables, fruits and other Primal foods.

150-300 grams per day: Insidious Weight Gain zone. Most health conscious eaters and unsuccessful dieters end up here, due to frequent intake of sugar and grain products (breads, pastas, cereals, rice, potatoes – even whole grains). Despite trying to “do the right thing” (minimize fat, cut calories), people can still gain an average of 1.5 pounds of fat every year for decades.

300+ grams a day: Danger Zone of average American diet. All but the most extreme exercisers will tend to produce excessive insulin and store excessive fat over the years at this intake level. Increases risk for obesity, Metabolic Syndrome and type 2 diabetes.

Exercising according to the three Primal Blueprint laws will optimize gene expression and promote Primal Fitness.

Law #3: Move Frequently at a Slow Pace strengthens the cardiovascular and immune systems, promotes efficient fat metabolism and gives you a strong base to handle more intense workouts. Get between 2-5 hours per week of moderate aerobic exercise. Try to get a long walk in each day. Go on a long hike each weekend, or go for a leisurely bike ride a few times each week.

Law #5: Sprint Once in a While stimulates the production of HGH and testosterone, which help improve overall fitness and delay the aging process – without the burnout risk of excessive prolonged workouts. Go “all out” once a week. You can sprint in any variety of ways: running, swimming, cycling on a stationary bike, or even doing bodyweight squats using the Tabata protocol. The important thing is you give it your all.

Sleep: Adequate sleep is essential for health, helping us solidify memories and learn new skills, allowing muscles to grow and fat to burn, and maintaining the circadian rhythms that govern our immune system and metabolism. Aim for at least 8 hours a night. Limit artificial light at night to avoid disruption of your sleep cycle. Try these tips to ensure the best sleep possible.

Sun: Unfiltered sunlight is the best source of vitamin D, the crucial substance responsible for bone and heart health, hormonal function, cancer protection, and the strength of our immune system. 15 minutes of midday sun (without sunblock!) is ideal for most.

Play: The purpose of all this – healthy eating, moving, and living – is to make life more enjoyable. If you’re not letting go, having fun, and playing on a daily basis, are you really living? Take time every single day to do something fun, play a sport, enjoy a game.

Optional Challenges:

Go Barefoot: Our feet are lined with millions of nerve endings – and we cover them up with shoes. When you go barefoot, a whole new world opens up underfoot, improving your balance, your running, your proprioceptive awareness, and your appreciation for walking. It also reduces the loading on your joints, so go barefoot when it makes sense! If you’ve been wearing shoes for awhile, tread lightly and be cautious before you go too far or too fast.

Squat to Poop: Toilets are a recent invention on the evolutionary timescale, and research suggests that squatting to evacuate is more efficient, more effective, requires less straining, and may even be protective against serious digestive disorders.

Embrace Acute Stress: If chronic stress is a killer, acute stress (hard workouts, brief cold exposure, a skipped meal) makes us stronger. Just don’t let it get away from you; an acute stressor can very quickly turn into a chronic stressor.

Stand at Work: Sitting is the new smoking. It’s as dangerous to our long-term health as tobacco and yet most people sit on their duffs for eight hours a day at the office. Combat this scourge with a standup workstation, or at least by alternating sitting with standing. Make sure you do it right.

Walk 10,000 Steps a Day: Grok‘s daily life was characterized by lots of low-level movement – constant motion. Avoid sedentism and emulate his movement patterns by walking at least 10,000 steps a day.

The following five Action Items require minimal logistics, expense, and hassle. In fact, it’s likely that implementing these Action Items will reduce complexity and increase flexibility in your life. While it’s important to reject a robotic, obsessive approach in favor of an intuitive approach, it’s essential to make the commitments detailed in order to enjoy the full benefits of living Primally. After reading and understanding these articles, you can start your 21-Day Challenge in earnest.

What to Expect

Although most people find going Primal to be an intuitive, sensible, smooth process, it is a large departure from what you’re probably used to doing – and there will be difficult moments as you adjust to your new lifestyle. Here’s what you can expect.

Low carb flu: Burning fat for energy requires different machinery than burning carbs. If you’ve been eating a carb-based diet for years and suddenly reduce the carbs, it will take several days for the fat-burning gears to start working at optimal output. In the meantime, you may experience fatigue, headaches, and malaise. But no matter how hard or unpleasant it might seem, know that it will pass and you will be better for having experienced it.

There are other common stumbling blocks when first starting a Primal lifestyle. See the following articles for further guidance.

Why You Should Do This

We all want to feel good, look good, and avoid the doctor’s office for as long as we can, but we don’t want to be miserable in the process. The Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge shows you how to get there without depriving yourself of all that is good in life. You’ll learn that not only is getting healthy simple and straightforward, it’s enjoyable. It doesn’t have to be a miserable exercise in self-flagellation. Most enduring of all will be the realization that you have the power to rebuild and renew yourself by influencing gene expression through diet, movement, sun, sleep, play, and all the rest – and that you know how to do it, thanks to your experience with the challenge.

Past Challenge participants have reported dozens of positive changes, including but not limited to:

Body fat: Your body’s newfound reliance on fat (both stored and dietary) for energy will result in lower levels of body fat.

Cravings:Sugar cravings are merely a reflection of a reliance on glucose. By using fat for energy, your cravings for sweets will diminish and even disappear, and your steady appetite and energy levels will reduce your desire for salty, carb-rich snacks.

Stress levels: By rejecting toxic modern food and chronic patterns of exercise, Primalizing your lifestyle will reduce baseline stress levels and give you more firepower to deal with the stressors of modern hectic life.

Total fitness:Primal Blueprint Fitness is founded on functional, full-body movements that prepare you to move through the environment with grace, strength, and agility.

Need Help?

We aim to make the Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge as simple and streamlined as possible. It’s founded on basic evolutionary principles, but it is a paradigm shift for most people – and paradigm shifts can be scary, daunting things. In case you need help with making the transition, we’ve got you covered:

Cookbooks

The Primal Blueprint Cookbook: The first thing I tell people who doubt the Primal Blueprint is “Try the food and then we’ll talk,” as I hand them a copy of this cookbook. Wow guests, skeptics, and yourself with any of the recipes.